1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a technical information management system for a development support system that facilitates the work of developing computer systems, and, more particularly, to a system for entering information relevant to the computer system under development, retrieving the engineering information that pertains to its development, and then browsing through the engineering information thus retrieved.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many of the problems arising after the development of a computer system such as, but not limited to, degraded performance or failure to get started or connected are traceable to errors in the design process. These errors include database or application design errors and C/S linkage errors. These errors may well have been caused by lack of a full consideration that should have been directed at the extensive scope of engineering information normally associated with the development of a computer system.
Generally, the development of a computer system involves the development of application programs that run in conjunction with a mix of middleware (existing software) products. The only way to avoid the errors mentioned above and other errors is for the developers to read through the entire documentation related to the products that make up the computer system under development so they can understand the concepts expressed therein.
In addition, the documentation supplied with a product covers an extensive array of information, from general topics to very specific topics of use only in exceptional situations. Much of the information is irrelevant to the particular computer system under development. Moreover, single computers are built on such a large repertoire of software products that gaining full insight into the associated vast store of engineering information prior to preceding with design work would be almost hopeless.
Typically, a system is brought into being by introducing or using a mix of middleware products and developing application programs to run on these middle products. However, the use of middleware products produced by a single vendor to develop a computer system has become rare in recent years.
In increasingly fewer cases, developers resort to the same set of middleware products to develop a computer system. More often than not, they choose middleware products adapted from one development project to another. Consequently, each time they embark on a new development project, they have to read documentation that contains a large amount of engineering information.
What is needed is a system that has the means available to store engineering information related to a computer system under development so that only the required pertinent information is retrieved.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system capable of storing engineering information related to a computer system under development so that only the required pertinent information is retrieved.
It is another object of the present invention to enable users to develop high-quality computer systems without having to read through an entire set of documentation covering vast amounts of engineering information each time they embark on a development project.
It is a further object of the present invention to have engineering information stored in association with a computer system under development retrieved by entering questions regarding items pertinent to the development of the computer system.
It is an additional object of the present invention to facilitate access to information relevant to a particular system under development from a vast store of engineering information, thereby allowing the developers to focus on the information that is truly needed, thereby reducing development errors.
It is also an object of the present inventions to allow developers to proceed with their work by obtaining only the information and technologies that are relevant to their current tasks in the chain of successive development processes.
It is a still further object of the present invention to enable management to check the status of checklist items, so that developers can make better decisions as to when to move to the next process with the check status taken into consideration.
It is another object of the present invention to improve the quality of a system under development.
The above objects can be attained by a system that includes an engineering information storage unit, in which engineering information about the computer system under development is stored in association with information about the development process for the computer system. A program for entering information relevant to the system under development is provided along with a program for retrieving engineering information that pertains to the development of the computer system from the engineering information storage unit. A program for outputing the engineering information that is retrieved is also provided.
These together with other objects and advantages which will be subsequently apparent, reside in the details of construction and operation as more fully hereinafter described and claimed, reference being had to the accompanying drawings forming a part hereof, wherein like numerals refer to like parts throughout.